There’s a new movie about climate change making the rounds, and it has garnered the support of the former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. The film, called Climate Hustle, claims that there is no climate change and that the whole idea has been created by scientists and hyped by the media. That movie debuted in some 400 theaters on May 2, and on Jimmy Kimmel Live, host Jimmy Kimmel had something to say about it — with a little help from his friends.

After a brief introduction, Kimmel shows a clip from a Guardian interview with Palin. She goes off on one of her typical rambling, semi-coherent rants:

I want people to feel empowered to ask questions about what is being fed them from the science community, that something is not making a whole lot of sense when it comes to inconsistent data that is being produced and being fed, especially to our children when it comes to ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ whatever they’re calling it today.

“That was one sentence,” Kimmel observes. And not even the biggest facepalm moment from her interview. That moment came when she said this:

It’s perpetuated, it’s repeated so often that too many people believe that ‘Oh well, I guess that if 97 percent of all scientists believe that man’s activities are creating changes in the weather, who am I to question that?’

Kimmel agrees. “Exactly,” he says. “Who are you to question that?” He says that Palin’s notion that she knows more about climate than 97 percent of scientists is “offensive” and “dangerous.”

Then he brilliantly sums up the opposition to climate change:

Climate change is not a liberal vs. conservative thing, but the people who profit from ignoring it want you to think that it is.

Kimmel follows that observation with some facts about climate change, and says that you know climate change is real when “the hottest year on record is whatever year it currently is.”

But the best part of the video comes when Kimmel brings in a group of scientists to talk about climate change. “Watch this,” he says, “and if you disagree, when we’re all under water I hope you’re the last one who gets a snorkel.”

That comment is followed by a variety of scientists who one by one tell the audience that climate change is real and that the consequences will be catastrophic. “We’re not f***ing with you,” each of them says.

The whole industry of climate change denial is funded by people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. As Upton Sinclair observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In this case, it’s about much more than salaries — it’s about the multi-billion dollar international fossil fuel business, and the manufacturing of climate change as a political issue rather than a scientific fact, in order to keep that business in operation.

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Wes Williams is a lifelong political junkie, stuck in the red end of blue Delaware, where he lives near the beaches with his wife of 34 years and three cats. While politics of all sorts are his passion, he is particularly interested in issues involving labor, education, and the justice system. Follow Wes on Twitter at @WesWilliams_AI or on his Facebook page, LeftOfLiberal.